I've been out of the whitebox arena for awhile, purchasing pre-built dell or hp systems. I'm interested in any ideas for a whitebox linux server with dual or quad core, 4-8GB of ram, to run vmware on. It needs to be able to see SATA or SAS disks, and at least 2 nic ports/cards.

Thanks for any advice.

johnsfine

11-10-2009 10:10 AM

Check some CPU and motherboard pricing at NewEgg. Almost anything you select will be compatible with Linux. The second nic is the only unusual item you want.

I took a quick look at NewEgg. An add in PCI Express nic card for the second nic is $33, which seems excessive.

I looked at motherboards supporting AMD dual and quad core CPUs. Restricting to those that include a second nic cuts your choices from over a hundred down to 8. But they look like reasonable choices and not significantly more expensive (certainly not $33 more) than comperable motherboards without the second nic.

Almost any current motherboard has SATA interfaces on board and Linux supports them.

dyasny

11-10-2009 02:54 PM

Brandname servers are better suited for virtualization, so I'd stick to them if possible at all.